10/07/2026
If you read nothing else today, read this...
From Dr. Paul Parks (ER doc, pres ER Med, AMA) in the Calgary Herald...
"Apparently, the government’s calculations show that if we let specialists desert public hospitals, enticed by the ability to bill Albertans 10 times the government rate for private care, everyone wins.
I’ve learned that resistance is futile. It appears past time I do my share to decrease the public queue by offering my expertise to those willing and able to pay. Why should only select physician specialties be burdened with a monopoly on the desperate and suffering?
As an emergency physician, I regularly witness access block and the rapid disintegration of safe and timely care. The ongoing deterioration of wait times compels me to reconsider and to do my part for the new Alberta economy. The plan is simple: the moment my official emergency department shift ends, I will get on team UCP and wade out into the waiting room with a credit card machine in hand. A couple of hours here and there of bonus capitalism.
Anyone who has been to an Alberta ED waiting room lately will know what a ripe untapped market it is. The consumers have been sitting on plastic chairs for 14 hours or more. They are desperate, trapped, and highly motivated.
I can easily provide VIP service to a handful of patients with disposable income and open wallets. As per UCP private-sector logic, I will naturally leave the people with serious issues to whatever skeleton crew is left handling the collapsing public system. Complex, unprofitable, acute illness belongs in the public domain, leaving the quick, lucrative private cash flow entirely unimpeded.
My offer may seem to fly in the face of just resource allocation, but not so, says our government. This is the very logic it is applying to surgical patients while assuring us that the financial sacrifice of the rich will trickle down to benefit the poor. Surely, moving an anesthesiologist out of a public hospital to facilitate low-acuity joint surgery, scopes, and ENT or hernia repairs will make the cancer surgery queue move faster. If it works for them, why wouldn’t it work in an emergency department, too?
I do have a few operational questions for our health minister and premier as I prepare to jump in. I assume I will be encouraged to implement dynamic surge pricing when the waiting room hits capacity? Can I set up a “Private-Pay ED Test Interpretation” booth next to triage?
For a hefty upfront fee, I can look at a patient and tell them if their blood work is actually worth waiting 16 hours to see a public doctor about. You know, paid “screening” that they can then attempt to expense back to the government once they confirm their emergency was real.
To maximize government shareholder value, I will commit to establishing a private philanthropic foundation with a portion of my proceeds: an infrastructure grant to kickstart a new Airdrie or Edmonton hospital the government refuses to build. The tax write-off alone will be spectacular.
I am ready to pivot to this superior provincial corporate model. But there’s a catch. The premier needs to allow emergency physicians to participate in her capitalist panacea. I’m sure she won’t want to deny emergency patients the right to buy their way out of the chaos. Maybe our protests have just been too loud, and she doesn’t know we are finally ready to convert.
By UCP logic, if every Alberta physician did their part by prioritizing the wealthy, we could collectively eliminate the waits for all patients in some free-market, magical way. It is time to assimilate."
